Cross River Agrees to Acquire Accrue, Adding Branded Wallets, Stored Value and Rewards to Its Embedded Finance Stack
Cross River's parent, CRB Group, has agreed to buy Accrue, whose platform lets merchants combine stored value, payments and rewards in one branded wallet. Terms were not disclosed and the deal is subject to customary closing conditions.
By Daniel Osei, Journalist, Payments and Cards
Cross River Bank's parent company, CRB Group, Inc., has agreed to acquire Accrue, a fintech that runs branded wallets, stored value and rewards at the payment layer for merchants, Cross River said on 20 October 2026. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, and financial terms were not disclosed.
Accrue's team will join Cross River. Accrue founder and CEO Michael Hershfield will take a leadership role building out Cross River's embedded finance offerings.
What Accrue adds
Cross River provides regulated banking infrastructure for brands and fintechs across accounts, cards, payments, lending, digital assets and agentic commerce. Accrue's platform, operated by Accrue Money, Inc., lets merchants connect stored value, payments, rewards and customer engagement in one branded wallet. Cross River says adding it gives partners a complete embedded finance stack, letting them offer customers both payments and loyalty rewards.
"Payments and loyalty are becoming one," said Gilles Gade, founder and CEO of Cross River. "Every brand wants its own wallet, and with Accrue, all of our clients can now build one on our platform."
Hershfield said he started Accrue "with the belief that financial products would increasingly live inside the brands and experiences customers use every day", and that Cross River's "technology, scale and global reach" would let the company take that further.
Why it matters
Branded wallets with stored value sit where payments and loyalty meet. A merchant that holds a customer's prepaid balance and rewards in its own app keeps repeat spending and customer data inside its own experience. By folding the wallet layer into a sponsor bank's platform, Cross River is pitching it to any client that already uses its accounts and payments rails.
The deal also continues Cross River's push beyond classic banking-as-a-service. The company lists digital assets and agentic commerce among its offerings, and says payments and loyalty are converging across physical, digital and agentic channels. Neither side said when the deal is expected to close.
Sources
- Cross River, "Cross River to Acquire Accrue, Expanding Financial Infrastructure with Integrated Wallet Capabilities", 20 October 2026: https://www.crossriver.com/newsroom/cross-river-to-acquire-accrue-expanding-financial-infrastructure-with-integrated-wallet-capabilities